Stream of consciousness SEO

25/08/2009

how do you interact with pictures?

Filed under: Building trust, Populating your site, Telling stories — Tags: , , , , , — proseotalk @ 10:31 pm

You’ve all seen them – those great looking sites … probably made in Flash, with cool whizzy animations, dramatic graphics, all the funky stuff.

And we all know that sometimes images can be a lot more powerful than words.

Except, you can’t interact with them (unless of course your images are moving, and it’s an embedded YouTube vid or a Ustream live feed).

And right now, interactivity is where it’s at. Thanks largely to what most people are calling social media or Social Media. I like to call it interactive media – and it’s something I’ve been participating in online for maybe 10 years now, primarily through message boards and forums.

Not a huge number of different ones, a small, select group … I have started a few, currently moderate one, have been a very active participant in three or four.

One of them is an online Success Team (once again, a la Barbara Sher) that originated from her message boards … we started out with 7 or 8 members, had a few fluctuations over the years, now down to just four of us and these days we probably all blog more and post more on Facebook than we do on the message board itself.

The thing that has held that little group of women together – since none of us have met in person, are the words we share, the words about our lives, our families, our jobs and businesses, our sorrows and our joys. And in more recent years, technology has allowed us to share some images too … which is great since two of our members are artists and it is always a treat to see their work.

My membership of the SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) message boards, firstly Camp Sark, and then the Marvellous Message Board (MMB for short) took me to the US to stay with women I had only ever met online – a hugely brave thing for me to do at the time, and a wonderful adventure I will always remember.

Then there’s the Tavern – where I am one of the “buxom wench hostesses”. This inspiring group of women is spread between New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the UK, Europe, the US and Canada. Over the years I have laughed, cried, lived and loved with them. They are some of the most supportive, intelligent, creative and downright hilarious women I have ever come across and my life is richer for having them all in it. Some of these women I have met in person, some I have had in my house, some I have travelled to meet in Melbourne for our “wenchfest”.

Once again, we mostly share in words, but we also upload pictures of our lives, the places we live, people we love, food we make … all that jazz.

Then of course there are the raw boards, the most important one to me being a spin off from the Tavern (yeah kinda like a sitcom). Started by my friend Lucie Walker in Canada, this board has also been a powerful source of information and inspiration for my raw food journey, and her blog is a font of tremendous wisdom.

I guess this truly is a stream of consciousness ramble tonight, but my point is that our words are very powerful for building bonds between you and the very real people who are out there reading what you have to say.

Never forget that.

Don’t be afraid to open up and share, and be open to the fact that the internet has become an incredibly powerful way of building relationships from one side of the world to the other, and of helping bring about change on an international level.

Oh and, back to those flashy websites that are all about the look. So often they have no soul – they just look pretty, but we get bored with them really fast, because they are not a place where people feel comfortable about hanging out. Bit like a fancy show home where you are afraid to sit on the white leather couches. It looks really cool, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

To me, the trick of creating websites that really work is making your site feel like a place people feel comfortable – and want to come back to. Because you have interesting stuff to say – and because you are happy to listen and have made it possible for your customers/readers/members to get onboard and share.

If you have a moment please share in the comments some of the online places you feel relaxed hanging out in.

Thanks again for reading.

Karen

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23/08/2009

would you watch an advert only channel?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — proseotalk @ 10:35 pm

Here’s a thought that popped into my head during a presentation the other day (I was listening, not presenting) … how paradigm shifting would it be if we put all the tv adverts on their own special channel?

So I did a little research and apparently a woman in the UK did exactly that – launched an advert only channel in 2004. Which seems to have disappeared with little trace and a placeholder website using her domain name.

Does that mean this is an idea with little merit? Or perhaps just that her timing was wrong … or the facts that she was under-resourced and had no television experience might have had something to do with it.

Why do I think it could be a good idea in the current environment? Because television channels are struggling to sell advertising space, devices like Tivo and MySky are making it a breeze to never watch another tv ad again … and yet there is a huge creative industry that is vested in making advertising.

Some of it now shows on YouTube of course … and the creatives get to make longer and more subtle ads in the hopes of them going viral. So perhaps there is a place to air the best of what is made – and a chance for us to view them in high-res, without waiting for endless buffering before we can appreciate the work that has gone into each one.

What I am thinking is, how many of our movie makers/directors/camera peeps etc etc got their starts making ads for the telly?? Many many I am sure, to say nothing of the employment and experience it provides for our actors who are struggling to make a living.

So if pay-TV is the model that is making money, while free to air is losing revenue on a daily basis … where to from here?

Of course, an advert only channel could also show those compilation programmes with the best of international advertising humour etc … there is plenty of scope to create interesting viewing.

Love to hear what you think- does this idea have legs in 2009??

Please comment below.

cheers

Karen

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21/08/2009

Fresh is best – 5 reasons to update your site content right now!

Filed under: Populating your site — Tags: , , — proseotalk @ 11:05 pm
fresh green

fresh green

Sometimes we need to state what to many might seem like the screamingly obvious – your website is NOT a brochure. Please don’t just “set and forget” and expect it to provide any kind of return on the investment you have placed in getting it up and running.

Fresh is definitely best – best for your readers – old and new, and best for those lovely search engines who are constantly seeking out new material.

So the five reasons to update your site right now?

1) To show the world you are alive! First and foremost, people want to know what is going on with you and your website is your shopfront, your window to the world. If nothing is happening on your site, and nothing ever changes, then viewers might just infer that you are not updating anything because nothing is happening in your business (or if it’s a blog, your life) – you have nothing new to say. In reality, you might be way too busy to update your site – if that’s the case, please make the effort to just freshen it in the obvious places on a regular basis.

2) They won’t come back. If people make the effort to come back a few times to see what is up with you, and nothing is different, then chances are they won’t bother coming back again – so you’ve lost them.

3) You’ll lose business to your competition. If they see nothing happening on your site, visitors might also conclude that perhaps you are no longer in business, and if they are potential customers wanting to buy a product, or comission your services, then they are very likely to move on to your competition.

4) Not updating content that is obviously out of date makes your company look incompetent. Is that the perception you want the market to have of you?

5) The search engines will start downgrading your site if there is nothing new being uploaded, particularly if your competitors with the same keywords are keeping their sites fresh and relevant.

Please remember to treat your site as a constantly evolving, incredibly powerful tool – you really need to view it as something very different from every other piece of marketing collateral you have ever developed. It can be as dynamic, flexible, exciting, innovative and interactive as you want it to be – all you have to do is ask, the technology is at our fingertips like never before.

Looking forward to some juicy freshness from you now…

Karen

P.S. do you like my garden??

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18/08/2009

your site feel like a ghost town?

Filed under: Populating your site, Telling stories — Tags: , , , , — proseotalk @ 5:11 am

tumbleweed

Can you almost hear wind whistling through the unpopulated streets?

When you set it up, perhaps the pressure was on to simply get something on line, and you didn’t really have any client stories or depth of content to load anyway?

Ok. I mentioned in the tangerine skies post about how you can build content like press releases to make your company look established – even when your business is new or newish.

One of the things that visitors to your site, particularly those who might be potential clients, are looking for, are stories and examples from your existing clients.

They will be looking for testimonials of some kind, and case studies that clearly demonstrate the benefits of your products and services, and show how you work with your clients.

So what do you do when you are just starting up and you don’t have any clients to talk about yet?

I have two suggestions:

  1. Give your product or service away to a few clients/customers (or provide it at a reduced cost) in exchange for their agreement to provide you with client testimonials for your site. Please be clear that I am not suggesting you buy their support, but rather, that you provide something in exchange for them helping you out. If they don’t enjoy your product or service, don’t try to persuade them to say otherwise. These testimonials need to be genuine to really work for you.
  2. Create scenarios of how your product or service works. Create a “case A”, “case B”, “case C” that show pricing structure, how your product or service resolves a particular problem, how it is delivered etc. Once you have some real case studies you can replace these, but they at least provide a base for your customers to see what the experience of working with you would be like.

I suggest you stay away from creating fake (sometimes badly written) testimonials from non-existent customers and illustrating them with stock photography. The chances of it being very apparent to visitors to your site that these are not genuine, is very high – and immediately your credibility is undermined.

So, be creative, do what you need to do to get your product/service in front of customers – even if they are not paying full price, and focus your attention on getting their feedback as soon as possible.

Another source of testimonials that are becoming widely used, particularly in the tourism and hospitality sectors, are sites like Trip Advisor, which provides a free widget that can be added to your website, and a chance for your guests to make comments about your business and rate it. These can be incredibly powerful – for good or for evil … but of course, if you are getting bad reviews, then you need to do something about your product/service – don’t blame the reviewers!

That’s all I have for tonight.

Have fun driving the ghosts out!

Karen

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17/08/2009

rsvp … please?

Filed under: Building trust — Tags: , , — proseotalk @ 4:27 am

RSVP Logo

Répondez s’il vous plaît – yeah, that’s right – respond.

All too often in the information-overloaded world we live in – full of twatterbleeping, facebooking, beebopping, txting, online chatting and emailing messages – to say nothing of the more old fashioned forms of communication (like phone calls and face to face meetings), common courtesy appears to be lost.

What am I on about? Well, all too often, people get caught up in the overwhelm and forget that there is an individual human being on the end of some very specific forms of communication – and sometimes that human being is very keen to hear back from you when they have made the effort to communicate.

So that might be a comment on your blog site, an enquiry through your website’s enquiry system, a request for a quote … or a job application.

How often do you hear frustration from friends, family and co-workers about not hearing back? The sheer inconvenience when not hearing back slows them down from making a decision – what product to purchase, which supplier to use, which job to take more seriously.

Unfortunately it happens all too often, and really, it’s just plain rude.

If you are overwhelmed by so many messages you can’t keep up, and you can’t work out which communication is most important – take someone on to help you, or pay a contractor, service person or professional.

Please don’t be one of those people. Make an effort to respond, even if it is purely with a quick acknowledgement that you have received the communication, in whatever form it arrives.

And then take the time to sit down and respond in more detail, in a timely manner.

Always keep in mind that someone has taken the time to write to you – do them the courtesy of making the time in return.

(And if you really, really don’t have any way of managing your communications, take down your enquiry form off your site and hide your email until you have caught up on things. Mmm, didn’t think so.)

Please.

Merci.

Karen

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12/08/2009

tangerine trees and marmalade skies

Filed under: Building trust, Populating your site — Tags: , , — proseotalk @ 9:29 pm
winter sea

winter sea

So it would seem that the picture really is worth 1,000 words – and if it’s a cute one, then even better! My last picture post brought the most visits so far to my blog, which was very interesting and great illustration of my point about the power of images!

So I figured that this time I should include an image too – this one is from Takamatua, a bay on Banks Peninsula, New Zealand, about an hour’s drive from where I live. And yes, it has been coloured – there wasn’t really a marmalade sky.

And the point of this post? It’s all about perception.

Marketing people will tell you over and over again, “perception is reality” … so no matter what the actual reality is, that doesn’t matter … what matters is what people perceive that reality to be.

How does this affect your web content?

Well it’s all good for you if you have a new site and need to quickly build brand credibility, reputation etc. Because it is possible on the web to immediately present your business as an established organisation – or equally, you as someone with an existing reputation.

Look at the sites of the leading players in your market segment, and pay attention to the cues that indicate they are established and credible. These might be things like case studies and customer testimonials; a significant number of stories or press releases in their News pages;  a company profile that shows more than one person in the team – and gives some history to the business; a number of newsletters archived on the newsletter section; significant number of blog posts etc.

Now you might not be able to produce all of that overnight, but you can start to build up some material that will all go up on the site at once, but possibly with a variety of dates.

For example, you may have launched your business last year, but not got round to creating a web presence until 12 months later. At the time you started the business, you may not have put out any press releases – perhaps because you didn’t know how, or you didn’t think what you were doing was particularly newsworthy at the time. Or, you simply wanted to put a toe in the water before you started making a lot of noise about your business.

No matter what the reason, you can create a press release – that is purely for your site, which is dated from the time you launched your business. Then create additional releases for significant moments in the next 12 month period – so when your new website goes live, you have three or four releases up there, all dated chronologically.

The great thing about this approach is that you don’t have to worry about pitching these releases to your target media, you can write them specifically for your audience. Which means you can provide a more specialised type of information – designed for your audience, rather than the broader brush approach you would take for business media.

You can also optimise these releases for your target keywords, and incorporate links to other parts of your site, and to your sales conversion path, so they provide a great opportunity to improve your rankings and direct people into the most important parts of your website.

If you are not certain or confident about writing good press releases, there are plenty of online resources that will give you tips, like this for writing perfect press releases and this http://www.press-release-writing.com/newsletters/

So filling up your News page is a start to making your site look established and substantial - make sure it is rich with content, even if you have to create it retrospectively.

If you have a blog on your site, have at least five posts up in there before you reveal it to the world. Again, you can date them in sequence, so they give the impression you have been blogging for a while.

I think that’s enough for you to digest now – another post on building credibility further through your site content will follow soon.

à bientôt

Karen

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11/08/2009

5,000 words – the power of images

Filed under: Telling stories — Tags: , — proseotalk @ 6:37 am

baby-hand

center-of-gods-world-8

sleeping-kitten

homeless

happiness

You get the point, right …

What a picture is worth?

Yes, sometimes your content is even more powerful when you don’t write anything.

Namaste.

Karen

Karen

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10/08/2009

there’s a rooster on our back lawn!

Filed under: Uncategorized — proseotalk @ 2:10 am

no really, there was a rooster.

giant rooster on lawn

giant rooster on lawn

but it didn’t look quite like this.

It was a real one – my son sent me a text at work the other day saying “there’s a rooster on our lawn – wtf?” – lol!

I was slightly bemused, and had no idea where a rooster would have come from in suburban Christchurch.  About a week later I was hanging out the laundry and heard the unmistakeable sound of hens clucking someplace over the fence – so it would seem one of our neighbours has taken up the egg production business.

So next time the rooster turns up, a little bit of door-knocking should quickly solve the problem.

And the point of this post?

An eye-catching headline can work wonders!

Don’t be afraid to be creative and put it out there.

That’s all for tonight.

Ka kite ano (see you tomorrow).

Karen

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06/08/2009

The personal is universal

Filed under: Populating your site — Tags: , , , — proseotalk @ 1:57 am

For a number of years now I have kept in my head a catchphrase that really resonates with me – every time I revisit it, it still makes absolute sense. As a creator of written material (daily) and of speeches (less often), I believe very strongly that the “personal is universal”.

What does that mean in practice? Well basically, that there is no such thing as the “general public” – so don’t try to write for them.

As a speaker, the best advice is to speak directly “to” someone in your audience. It is not possible to connect with every single person, but the more you are able to focus your message, the more effective it will be.

The nasty, bland, politically correct ‘corporatespeak’ that we as web content professionals are steering clients away from is the exact opposite of this.

If you try to speak to a really broad audience, not offend everyone, include everyone … you simply end up with content that no-one really identifies or connects with. And that really really doesn’t work.

Individual stories are the ones that connect and resonate – don’t try and “universalise” your story – you risk taking the humanity and the passion out of it.

If you keep it personal, not only people with similar stories will relate to you, other people will connect to your authenticity and learn from it in some way – perhaps be inspired by your experiences, perhaps learn from your mistakes – whatever. Keep it real, and it will work so much better than generalised blurb that connects with no-one.

There are plenty of brilliant examples on the web of people with inspiring, incredible stories … and of course, the plethora of “mommy bloggers” is an example of how people telling their very personal stories can generate a significant audience of readers who are interested to follow what is happening in their lives on a daily basis.

If you are not already following her blog, or her twitter feed,  check out www.dooce.com – a very personal blog that now provides a full time income for its author.

Whenever someone asks me why the personal content gets such a large following, I liken it to why soap operas are so successful (even though they are not the best examples of cinematic art). It’s because we all like an insight into the minutiae of other people’s lives. Helps us feel better about our own, and often distracts us from our own – it’s called escapism.

No matter what the psychology behind it, it works.

So keep it personal, keep it real, keep it authentic.

Ciao for now,

Karen

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03/08/2009

Time to tweak – update, update, update your site

Filed under: Populating your site — Tags: , , — proseotalk @ 6:07 am

Yes, tweak, not tweet! :)

So I promised the next post would be about editing your shitty first draft.

My secret to doing this is simple – read it outloud.

Once again, an old radio trick – which makes particular sense for radio copy, since it is written to be read out loud, but it applies to written text that will never be read out loud too.

When you have put that first draft down on paper, read it out to yourself and you will quickly see where the problems lie. I have yet to come across someone who can’t tell when something is grammatically incorrect as they read it out loud.

The key is that you insert the suitable grammatical tools, ie punctuation, in the places where you naturally stop for breath.

So if you pause, usually that’s the place for a comma. If you stop, and take a full breath – that is usually the place for a full stop. Trust me – this does work.

Don’t worry about any more fancy forms of punctuation at this point – if you can write something that flows as you read it aloud, then you are about 95% ahead of many who aim to put their thoughts on paper or a screen.

One tip though, make sure you are actually reading what you have written, not what you think you have written. If you are a visual type, it can be too easy to simply read out what you think the words are.

Then of course, you might like to run your words through the spell checker.

If you are not confident that spell check will pick up everything, get someone you trust to have a read before you publish your content. Getting two people to check it is even better.

Any questions? I would love to receive your thoughts or comments – just leave them down below.

The next post is about making a real connection through your written content.

Till then, happy creating

Karen

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